Former Nazi camp to host Israeli opera

Story of oppression ... the entrance to Buchenwald, where Fidelio will be staged. Photo: AP

Opera companies from Israel and Germany are joining forces to stage Beethoven's opera Fidelio at Buchenwald, near the site of the former Nazi concentration camp. The controversial project will unite singers and orchestra from the New Israeli Opera and the Erfurt Opera House, according to the Erfurt theatre's general manager, Guy Montavon.

"We have to remember what happened, but that doesn't mean we don't continue to live," he says. "Some people will be shocked ... but I think the majority are going to defend it."

The project is the brainchild of director Giancarlo del Monaco, who had the idea after visiting the memorial to those who died at Buchenwald. Del Monaco is already embroiled in a separate controversy over his forthcoming staging of Hansel and Gretel, also for the Erfurt Opera House. The production shifts the action from the magical forest into a red light district, where the children are pursued by paedophiles and the wicked witch transforms into a priest.

Montavon says the production is intended as a gesture of reconciliation that will "help to fill the big hole between the German and the Jewish people, to give a signal that we can do something good for Buchenwald".

Officials at the Buchenwald memorial have reportedly given permission for Fidelio to go ahead, although a spokeswoman says the production is still very much at the idea stage.

Erfurt Opera House is hoping to put on two performances in 2007. Del Monaco intends to stage the opera between two giant death masks representing the German poets Schiller and Goethe. The first half of the opera will be led by a German conductor and the second by an Israeli.

Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, is largely set in a prison. It follows the plight of an unjustly imprisoned nobleman and his wife's efforts to rescue him. Montavon describes it as a story of oppression, freedom, communication and love.